


Loyal Soldiers

by tooth_and_claw



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Moral injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Veterans, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1893600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooth_and_claw/pseuds/tooth_and_claw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after the nation learns of HYDRA, it bids farewell to Gabe Jones, Howling Commando and pop icon. Framed by his funeral, Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes all must come to terms with the memory of their fallen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loyal Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kissoffools](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissoffools/gifts).



 

             

  
            Gabe Jones was laid to rest on a gorgeous November day at the Sarasota National Cemetery with full military honors, an enormous crowd of guests, and a media cyclone. Steve Rogers could hear the shouting over the trumpets. Aside from the usual mélange of TV, newspaper, and now blog reporters and their attendant crews, there was a lot of disrespectful yelling coming from a not-insignificant crowd of, of . . . rabble-rousers. Steve couldn’t think of a better word to describe them that wasn’t curse, and he knew Gabe wouldn’t want him screaming epithets at these people, even in his head. “They’re just scared folks, Steve. Scared of what’s coming down on them that they have no control over.”

                Sam must have noticed the tight set of his jaw, because he put a warm hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t let them get to you, man. They’ve picketed every major funeral they could find out about.”

                “You know, I don’t think it’s some old fogeyism to find that really upsetting.” A senator Steve didn’t know was speaking in platitudes about nothing Gabe had ever cared about, so he took the opportunity to crane his neck and stare past the multitudes to a chain of veterans separating the burial from the crowd outside. He could barely see a few bouncing signs, garishly colored, and the hint of block letters. He didn’t need to read them now; he’d done so when the motorcade drove past.

                “Naw.” Sam adjusted his tie. “It isn’t you. If I could I’d run those assholes right out of the country, I would. You don’t want to know how many funerals I’ve been to that they’ve shown up, waving their hate around.”

                Steve shook his head. “It’s more than that this time.”

                Sam squeezed his shoulder. His hand had never moved. “I know.”

                “I hate that she has to hear it.” Steve murmured.

                “She’s a tough lady, Steve. She can handle it.” They both looked to the front row of the funeral, where family sat. In a wheelchair, wearing dignified black, Peggy Carter held the hand of Gabe’s eldest great-grandchild. Steve had been invited to stand up there with them, take his place in the ring of those Gabe had loved the best and called his kin, but he didn’t feel right about it. He didn’t belong there, with those who had watched Gabe’s children grow. He hadn’t gained smile lines from Gabe’s jokes alongside Peggy or Miranda, Gabe’s wife, or Tom, his brother. He’d give it all to feel like he belonged in that inner circle but the truth of the matter was, he just . . . didn’t. And that was no one’s fault, but it was truth. Given a few more years, maybe, but . . .        

                Gabe had welcomed him home with zero reservation, no shock at all, just a laugh and a smack between the shoulder blades, like Steve had been transferred to another unit for a time and was now back where he belonged. No one else, not even Peggy, managed that kind of timeless welcome. The surprise, the years, they always got in the way first, made a veil in front of the first smile.

                 The senator finished his speech. He was replaced by Gabe’s niece, a more welcome addition to the proceedings. Everyone straightened up, gave her the attention that had wandered during the senator’s platitudes. Steve tried. He listened to her opening words, which cut through the commotion with clarity and barely suppressed pride as she talked about the monumental strides her uncle had made for the civil rights movement, his work with Dr. King, his work for black veterans. Steve felt a heel, but he couldn’t hold on to the words. They kept trickling out his ears, blocked by memories. It wasn’t *her* voice Steve listened to.

                “That was some stunt with the helicarrier.” Gabe sipped his coke, put his feet up on the littered outdoor table. Cars whooshed by, voices and mowers background noise, September in full swing right past the barriers of his porch. Not here, though. Here was timeless, frozen not in ice but in warm hospitality. Season in and season out, Gabe sat, read books, drank his sodas, and smiled at everyone who walked by. Steve reclined in his wicker chair, taking care when it creaked too much, and rubbed his hands on his jeans.

                “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you saw.”

                “*Everyone* saw, Steve-O. Whole country was watching that one. I’ll admit, there was a minute there I was scared you weren’t going to be coming up from that bay.” He snorted. “I should’ve known. You and water-logged vehicles of mass destruction, huh?”

                “Least I didn’t wake up another generation later.”

                “You kidding? Wish you had. Then you wouldn’t be stinking up the place,” Gabe winked and waved to an elderly couple walking their tiny, poufy dog. “At least you’re here in Florida with the rest of us relics. Sun, sand, sea—“

                “Mosquitoes and alligators,” Steve said. Gabe just laughed.

                “Get 'et by either. That was one tough sonuva you were fighting, wasn’t he? Never got a real good look at him. News camera’s had to use their long lens to zoom in on the fight so everything was real shaky. Looked bad, though.”

                The change in subject left Steve adrift. He stared into the brown yard, past the palm fronds. A little lizard scuttled in an out of sight. Gabe watched him the same way Steve watched that lizard. Waiting for him to pop back into sight. “You figured it out?”

                 “I’ve only once seen that look on your face.” Gabe didn’t do grim well. He voice stayed light, no matter what; if a passerby heard them talking, they’d never know they were discussing anything but pleasantries. Steve wasn’t fooled. Gabe *knew*. Steve had been holding on to that secret name for three months, and he didn’t know if he could speak it now. The arms of his chair moaned in protest from what he thought was the barest tightening of his fists. “Do you know how?”

                “How else?” Steve said, staring at the vinyl siding. “Hydra.”

                “Hydra. Hydra this, hydra that.” Gabe snapped open another coke, his one true vice. “Piss-soaked bastards.”

                Steve snorted. “That’s a euphemism.”

                “Yeah, well. Whole country hasn’t had the joy of this kind of witch hunt since the Red Scare. Wouldn’t be surprised if Hazel Markus called up the neighborhood association and told them *I* was Hydra just so she could let her dog take a crap in my roses."  He softened. “Aw, Steve . . . “

                “He saved my life.” The neighborhood was old, nicer that just a retirement community full of those ticky-tacky boxes Steve hated. The trees were enormous, twisted old things filled with drifting Spanish moss. He watched it play in a breeze that suggested incoming rain. Gabe rocked in his chair.  “So he’s still in there.”

                “I know it. I know it for sure.”

                “Well well.” Gabe smiled, broad and open. His teeth were still intact and white as snowcaps. “Hope he drops by for a visit.”

                “He was dead, Gabe. I watched him fall. I mean . . . you were there, when I got back—“

                “And I watched you plunge 10,000 feet into arctic waters but here you are, spoiling my air,” Gabe began the arduous process of standing, a series of maneuvers punctuated by grunts, pops, and stretches. “No wonder this has hit you so hard.”

                Steve threw his hands into the air, overwhelmed by frustration. “I don’t know why everyone is so surprised I have feelings about dying.”

                Gabe stopped moving, even in the middle of one of his contortions. “What did you just say?”

                Steve’s ears grew hot, then his cheeks, and all frustration shriveled und eth heat of shame. “I didn’t mean that. At all.”

                No . . .” Gabe walked to the railing. “I think you did mean it. Just not in the way you said it.”

                “Well, you have old-man cryptic down. I need to take some lessons in that.” Steve joined him. Across the street, some children were chasing the family dog on their bikes, parents eyeing them from the front porch.

                “I mean-" Gabe poked him in the chest “—Mr. Pectorals, that the Steve you knew did die. Is in the process of dying, just like the rest of us old farts. Because everything you thought was true is falling down round your ears, and the last vestiges of your past are gunning for the finish line.”

                  Steve finally opened his soda, and had nothing to say in response.

****

                 Steve drifted away the moment Jones’ niece came up to speak, which was a shame. She was a damn good speaker, her voice pitched clear and loud enough to cut through the protestor’s bullshit. Well, his loss. Sam wasn’t just here for Steve—he grieved in his own way, for an icon. Jones was a hero, a great soldier and a greater man. The Howling Commandos hadn’t been *his* childhood heroes, too far away and faded for him, but the more he learned, the more Sam understood what a great debt everyone one of them was owed. It wasn’t just the military triumphs—it was the wars they fought at home. Sam knew Jones’ name better than he’d known Captain America’s. Jones was there when the bombs went off in Alabama. He walked that little girl to school, thrown abuse and detritus be damned. He’d helped James Morita earn restitutions for the Japanese Internment camps, even when the Black Panthers accused him of being a traitor for accepting that when restitution for slavery never got on the table. Jones was a part of Sam’s history, an admired figure but one who lived in books.

                 Now he lived in the ground, and Sam had never got to meet him. Steve’d invited him down once, but Sam was so fucking busy, pulling his hair out (literally, that patch in his beard still looked frayed) doing what he could for veterans in the wake of the Hydra disaster.

                 Shit, and here he was, drifting away himself.  Amanda Jones was still talking, but the fervor outside rose in decibels. Someone was getting into a fight.

                 Sam clenched his fists. “Be right back,” he muttered, patting Steve on the arm. Steve frowned, looked behind them at the ruckus, but Sam shook his head. “I’ll handle it.”

                 He navigated through a forest of black cloth and murmuring figures, many of them as distracted as he was by the commotion. He emerged into a ten foot buffer zone. Ahead, the human chain of older men and a few younger vets were in turn guarded by a multitude of silent police units, their drivers standing outside. Sam saw that many of them had their hands hovering, unoccupied and ready.

                 Beyond that was the crowd. He knew his lip was curling. The Westboro people were bad enough, and of course there were a few of them there too, shunned even by their fellow disrespectful assholes. The rest, the hundred or so red and shouting faces, held up other signs: KILL HYDRA, DOWN WITH SHIELD AND ALL TRAITORS, WHAT ELSE IS YOUR GOVERNMENT LYING TO YOU ABOUT, BABYKILLERS SERVING SNAKES.

                 “Really?” He barked. His own voice startled him. Steve must have noticed, the funeral must have, and Sam was embarrassed. His breath was coming in quick little shocks, almost in time with the bass of his heart. Danger, Sam Wilson. He took great efforts to unclench his fists, looking up into the kaleidoscope of tree leaves, trying to focus on nothing but the patterns of green, sun, sky blue above.  He slowed his breathing. He tried to hear nothing of the mob, which had locked unto him like he was an oncoming missile.

                 The fury slowly ebbed. Not bled out—there would be a punching bag for that, later—but sucked back inside him. He’d seen these guys, these same ruddy faces, several times before, though they’d added new fools to the ranks over time. Always swelling, never shrinking. They’d shown up first at James Onaway’s funeral, then Barbara Love, then Secrest, Yaeger, Lee, Anderson, and on, and on. This was the 27th funeral Sam had attended in the past few months. Twenty. Seventh. All of them had been funerals for veterans, and all of them save this one had been suicides. And *all* of them had these punks gathering around the outskirts shouting profanity—and he meant that in it’s all expansive sense, not just curse words but things unfit to be coming out of human mouths, accusations and cruelties no person should be shoveling onto another.

                 He ducked under the arms of two grim guys, both tall and strong despite their years, probably gulf vets. The cops on the other side saw him and did a double take—he was never going to get used to that, the recognition in people’s eyes—but they didn’t stand aside. “Excuse me, Mr. Wilson, but everything is under control.”

                 Sam raised his hands amiably. “I know it is, guys, just checking out the ruckus.” The cop who’d spoken was a chubby guy, maybe 20s, Hispanic, with beetle brows and a mouth that twitched from smile to nervous frown like a toddler had the controls between the two. He gestured at the assembled.

                 “Little scuffle. It’s already done.”

                 Sam noticed then that, two police cars down, the backseat was occupied. On the ground nearby, a sign was trampled: THEY DIED FOR LIES. Sam swallowed. “Thank you for your help.”

                 “No problem. Hey, my brother did two tours in Afghanistan. He doesn’t need these assholes telling him how much it sucked.”

                 Sam should have known what to say to that, but he didn’t. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and just stared into the sea of shouting faces. The cop didn’t seem insulted.

                 There were two women and three men at the front. They reminded Sam of bulls, nostrils flaring and madness in their eyes. Taunted and goaded into this place, a more compassionate side of him said, but he couldn’t bear that right now. He didn’t have the energy to see these people as suffering citizens. Right now they were just Dicks, that separate species. It took a minute, but Sam registered that one of them women was holding hands with a little girl who seemed surprised to be here. He stared at the animals her elders had become, sometimes baring her teeth in imitation, mostly chewing her nails. They were painted thickly with bright pink nail polish. It looked like the same kind Sam applied to his niece’s toes. The woman pullpushed the girl forward, like she was a toy dropped by a mechanical arm past the line of her parents and into the asphalt, five feet from Sam. Mom was saying something to the little girl. “Go on, sweetie,” she said. The pet name didn’t sound right in that angry voice. “Tell him what you think.”

                 He didn't give them the chance. “What in the hell is wrong with you?” Sam snapped at the woman. He scared the girl in the process and felt sorry for it, but this was just too damn much. “Seriously? SERIOUSY? Giving your kid a script to read, here? What is *wrong* with you?”

                 “Oh, what’s wrong with me?” The woman strained at an invisible leash, bridling. “I’m ashamed, that’s what’s wrong with me! Ashamed of my country, ashamed of all you. You didn’t fight for us! You fought for them! You fought for Hydra, and we've paid the price, and so have all of those innocent citizens in other countries. Terrorists be damned-- we know the truth. 9/11 was a Hydra plot, Homeland Security is a Hydra plot, and you're nothing but their henchmen!”

                 “Over 100,000 people dead in Iraq!” Someone shouted. The crowd cheered that. Sam’s stomach was sour, his throat blocked by a mudslide of clotted emotions. 340%, he wanted to shout back. That’s how much veteran suicides have spiked in the past few months. Men and women that thought they were past all this, their wounds ripped open again by one crashed helicarrier and an endless parade of paper that spelled their complicity in a real conspiracy, but what did such a spike in suicides mean against 100,000? Against the very real possibility that these people were *right*? That number was too large. These were probably the same people that contested it all of this before, made excuses for how it couldn’t be true. It’s always the ones most deeply loyal that are hurt the worst by betrayal.

                 All he could do was shake his head, such a weak defense. The woman was going on, staring at him, but he couldn’t hear her, just a ringing in his ears. The little girl was pulling on her mom’s arm. She was crying. She was afraid. She was afraid of Sam.

                 “Hey,” someone said, close to his ear. Or had been saying. It was the cop. “Hey man, come here, come on.” Sam’s first thought was that he must have looked ready to leap into the crowd and start throwing fists, but when he looked down at his body it was limp, barely standing. That cop took him by the shoulders and despite a foot’s difference in height, steered him away from the jeers, behind the car, behind a couple of them. The shouting faded, but so did the few sounds of the funeral. Sam started to breathe again. The cop was there, and pressing something slick and freezing cold into his hand. It was a can of coke, from god knows where. Gabe Jones’ favorite drink, Steve’d said. Huh.

                 “Trash.” The cop muttered. He took off his hat and sank unto the curb where Sam was already crashed. When did that happen? He popped open his own drink, took a long swallow. Little bubbles tinkled inside Sam’s can, a perfect soundtrack to the tingling in Sam’s hands and feet. “You okay?”

                 “Yeah,” Sam said. He flexed his fingers as rational thought returned. “Panic attack. Little one.” The cop didn’t flinch. Sam instantly liked him, even more so than his small kindnesses had already earned. Those words usually made guys uncomfortable. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

                 “Shoot. Chauncey’s got me covered for a minute. You looked like you could use a break.”

                 “You said your brother did a couple of tours. How’s he doing?”

                 It was a brazen question to ask of a man Sam didn’t even know the name of. The cop’s brows went for his hairline, but he also offered a smile, albeit a thin one. “I remember hearing on the news you’re a counselor for vets.”

                 “Was,” Sam said. Superheroing tended to take the focus away from the patient, make even the most prosaic sessions all about him. Unintended consequences. He knew it was okay, that people would get by— and he certainly loved his new job, loved it in a way that made him double over and gasp in joy sometimes—but especially right now, it bruised him.

                 “Yeah. Well, you know, he was all right. Came back a little screwy, little PTSD.” The cop added the last bit swiftly. “He been good for a year or so, but . . . eh, this stuff, the HYDRA stuff, it’s kinda sucked. He’s getting help. That’s all I’m gonna say, if you don’t mind.”

                 Sam put his hands up. “No problem at all. I’m glad he’s getting taken care of. I’m Sam, by the way.”

                 “Henry Mendoza and I know who you are.” The guy grinned. “How’s Cap?”

                 The one untarnished part of the whole deal and the first thing anyone asked about. Sam repressed a sigh, half exasperated, half amused. “He’s a little shaken up.”  Oh, wow, Sam didn’t mean to tell the truth. The cop- Henry- knit his impressive forehead and frowned over his drink. Sam took his first sip just to hide the grimace.

                 “It’s pretty fucked up.” The cop said. Voice grim. Someone yelled particularly loud, though indistinct. “They been covering all this stuff on the news 24/7, the congressional hearings and all that interviewing that Black Widow chick. But I saw on one of the tickers something about soldier suicides, you know? Made me worried for my brother, I called him up.” He scratched the dirt with his toe. “You really think HYDRA was behind the wars?”

                 Sam thought about all the files he’d seen, the stuff he’d been sorting through for Fury, the dossiers. “Yeah. Kinda. They didn’t have to push very hard, I think.”

                 “You served, right?”

                 He nodded.

                 “*You* okay?”

                 Sam laughed. “Well, I’m having panic attacks again.” He grinned, held up his thumb and forefinger. “Little ones. Naw, it’s all right. I know what’s going on, and why. It sucks, but . . . I got the resources and toolkit to deal. Most of the time.”

                 Henry took off his cap and ran his fingers through stubby black hair shiny with sweat. “Wish I knew the whys.” He sighed.

                 “Moral Injury.” Sam said. He could see Gabe Jones’ mourners shuffling around. They were probably lowering the coffin now.

                 “Say what?”

                 “Moral Injury,” You could hear the capital letters. “The wound caused by betraying one’s morals or being betrayed by a moral authority.  So my head doc told me, at least. Something people are only now paying attention to but has probably been a part of the shellshock package since war began." Sam stopped himself. He didn’t want to lecture. Henry looked thoughtful, twisting his cap in his hands.

                 “Don’t think it’s only the soldiers suffering from that right now. No offense.”

                 Sam saw a trickle of people moving away from the gravesite. The burial must be over, which meant people were getting ready to return to their cars—which meant people were getting ready to run right into that mob.

                 Betrayal by a moral authority, someone who you implicitly trusted to take care of you. SHIELD, which had done what the NSA and the CIA and the DoHS all couldn’t: return some measure of trust to a public institution of war, and they were the tower that fell. Didn’t matter they every other acronymed governmental agency and the same amount of corporate entities were Hydra-minefields, as well. The symbol had fallen. Cope by overcompensating, scapegoating. Shuffle the injury to the next guy so you don’t feel so bad for being taken in. A national bullet wound, and there was no one to blame but you and yours.

                 Damage never healed through ignorance, Sam knew that. It was the ones who insisted they were fine, who saw everyone else as the problem, that were the dangerous ones.

 ****

                 Such an irony. On one of the few days-- maybe the last day-- her mind felt her own, Peggy's body had decided it belonged to someone else, and that someone was content to stay seated as a mechanical trolley lowered her closest friend into the ground. She wanted to throw in a handful of the grave dirt, as Gabe's family did. She *needed* to, to feel that sandy grit in between her withering fingers, to repudiate Gabe's flag-strewn coffin. Thank god for the pity of relatives; her niece noticed her scowl. “Aunt Peggy?”

                 “Help me up.” Peggy bit the end of her tongue when her legs moaned under her feathery weight. What a joke-- femurs so brittle they couldn't handle the bulk to a 92 pound woman. Too many breaks, her doctors had said. Every one of them was still worth it. Her niece brought her into the line, leaving the nurse attendant to watch over the wheelchair. Miranda and Carlos, Gabe's eldest living son, had gone first. Poor Miranda. She was still so young, only in her mid sixties. This was still new, this losing people. Sharon was a warm and steady presence at her elbow, giving Peggy the strength she needed to fling the grave dirt down and watch it spatter over the stars and stripes. “Old coot,” she muttered. “Never understood why you'd want to be buried.”

                 “Peggy,” Miranda said, and took her hand. It was warm and dusty from the dirt, but familiar. We could be close, Peggy thought, if there was any time to be close left. Their hatchet was buried. There was a moment, though, as they held each other’s eyes, and Peggy’s hand tightened—if you hurt him, I will end you, woman. You think he’s stronger by dint of the 20 years he’s got on you, but I know the power of women like you. Don’t you dare break him—and then she was back, in the proper time, where Miranda *had* hurt him, and he had hurt her, and things had gone as all good marriages do: they forgave, and it was none of her business whether she liked Miranda or not, because Gabe did. He loved her.

                 Had loved her.

                 Sharon guided her away from the open grave. Her chair was there, suddenly, and hadn’t she left it on the other side of the stone? And the snazzy looking gentleman behind it was not her nurse. He was beautiful, a dream come true. Her Steve, but . . . Steve was dead. “You look beautiful, Peggy.” He said, offering her his hand.

                 “Do I know you, young man?”

                 Crestfallen, the boy continued holding forth his hand, but he looked like every thread of him was unraveling in the afternoon air. Peggy felt terrible. Like a nightmare in which she never quite knew the rules and was always playing the game wrong, she had made a faux pas of grand scope and didn’t understand how she’d done it. There was a young woman next to her, who was exchanging meaningful looks with the lovely man. She too was dressed up, though the cut of her blouse and skirt was an echo of a man’s business attire. It was a striking look, powerful. Peggy immediately liked the woman and her masculine clothes with their air of authority.

                  A sharp and needling pain in her legs made her cringe. There was a wheelchair for her, the seat warmed by the sun. The medic who held it had clean hands—that was good, he kept up his hygiene even in the field. The nurse lowered her into the chair and helped her feet into the stirrups, and Peggy wondered if this was a spinal injury. Would walking ever be possible again?

                 “Aunt Peggy, its Sharon.” The nurse was crouching in front of her.

                 “If that’s some kind of nickname the medics have for me, I don’t approve.” Peggy snapped. The pain was fading, but where was the hospital tent? Shouldn’t they be getting her there, if she was injured?

                 “Aunt Peggy.”

                 She wasn’t in the field. She was staring at a line of bright, newly installed headstones. She smelled freshly tilled earth, what she thought were trenches or bombed ground. Good god, she’d been gone. “I need to leave.” She said, specifically to Sharon.

                 “Okay. We can do that.” Sharon straightened up, smiled at the person who held Peggy’s chair in place. “We’re going to take a little break and see if she’s up for the wake. Will we see you there?”

                 “Yeah. Yeah. Do you want me to . . .?”

                 “I’ve got her, thanks.”

                 “I am right bloody here!” Nothing was worse than that, being talked over like a child. Sharon had the decency to look guilty, but of course it was Steve who stammered apologies and came around the chair. Out of all the people who would treat her as an invalid . . . she knew he didn’t mean it, of course. It was something so easily slipped into, wasn’t it, and she’d done it herself when her own mother was dying. It simply . . . delineated the line between them. For what was as far as she knew the first time, she had become the elderly, the infirm to him. It had been so nice, to be seen as young again. To not be invisible.

                 Sharon wheeled her away after they exchanged goodbyes. Peggy already knew that Steve would be watching them walk, his eyes first on Peggy, then furtive and uncertain, settling on Sharon. These things were inevitable, and she bore no ill will toward her niece. It was just sad, it was. Sad and human. Until just then, Steve had treated her like the lady she’d been—no, not treated, seen her as such, he really had, just been totally unaware of her sagging face and silver hair-- but all things move on, in the end. Could she really be that angry? To him, she was finally Old, but from the moment she’d seen him, Peggy had known he was Young. Anything else was playing pretend on her part.

                 This was supposed to be about Gabe.

                 Car rides were terrible experiences, now. Like being around Steve, they left her unsure of where and when she was. A familiar street could become another; roads she didn’t know were unmapped and often dangerous incursions in foreign cities. Sharon knew to make every drive as quick as possible, but Peggy had other tricks for keeping her wits. The little sunshade did just enough to block Peggy’s view, and since it was a good day, she wouldn’t tear it down in a fit of pique and end up weeping like a sodden moppet at the unfamiliar landscape. As soon as she was seated and buckled in (her hands shook too much for this and Sharon had to clip the belt; Peggy didn’t know why they bothered, because belt or no, in a wreck her bird bones would splinter and she was dead either way. Still. It was these little things that made them happy) Peggy let her papery eyelids shutter close. Sharon would think her napping—which sounded fantastic, actually. She probably would.

                 But first there was Gabe again, and his phone calls. Incessant man. The moment he’d known Steve was back, he’d phoned her.

                 “You know about this?”

                 This was before the hospice, if only just; she still lived in her home and was sitting in the garden, trying to remember where she’d left her damned shears (they were in her blouse pocket) back when they’d allowed her sharp objects. She’d been annoyed at the intrusion, but not for the interruption of her thoughts. “I rather thought to keep him to myself for a little while.”

                 Gabe was quiet on the other end. She heard him spinning the phone cord, whapping it against the hall table like he always did when their long-distance conversations annoyed him. “Alright. Suppose I can’t blame you. Tell me about it. Tell me about him. Everything you can, Peggy.”

                 She had, but the rest of the conversation turned to slag in her memory, half melted bits bonding with other, related conversations. There were many of them. Steve was she and Gabe's favorite subject because it kept them away from speaking on their most pressing concerns—her deteriorating mind, his poisoned body.

                 Ah, that triggered a specific memory. Much later, this must have been. Much later, yes, not even six months ago, perhaps. Right before she reached that point in her illness where there was only fluff and fuzz in her short-term memory, the vague impression she was and had been living but no solid forms left. This was clear, though. (The funeral wouldn’t be. Peggy knew that. She didn’t bother grieving over it, because why cry for something that, in her reality, would not exist come evening? She would probably think the wake a very somber birthday party.)

                 Again, Gabe called her. He always called first. “It’s official, I’m a dead man.” That was his charming opener.

                 “It’s done then?”

                 “No more the docs can do. It’s been a long journey, but the end has come.” He was cheerful, not even forced. He had never thought the brain tumor was survivable. It was slow growing but as implacable as their age. She thought they might have tried radiation or chemo at some point but that’s not how she remembered his cancer, only the presence of it and Gabe’s acceptance. The doctors had told him at the beginning: it will be fine until it isn’t.

                 And now it wasn’t. “Oh Gabe. How long?”

                 “Who knows? A couple of days, a couple of months.” He sounded tired. Energetic Gabe, never sleepy, always wanting to go out, never dull-eyed.

                 “Does Miranda know?”

                 “Yes.” Amusement.

                 “Does Steve?” Nothing at all. “I know he visited you recently.”

                 “He did. I didn’t tell him, though, and I know you haven’t told him about you, either.”

                 She put her hand over her heart. It wasn’t that which was failing, but a hand over the kidneys wasn’t in her nature. “Serves me right for asking, I suppose. Why tell him, especially now?”

                 Gabe was quiet, chewing on some gristly thought. “This has been hard on him, Peg. I think even more so than waking up was.”

                 “It’s hard on all of us.” She didn’t mean the icy tone, but it was true. All of us: all of SHIELD, and not just the active agents.  Peggy was complicit, of course she was. She had been taken in just like the rest, blinded by hubris to the growing mold on her precious creation.

                 “Not just that. Peg—it’s Bucky.”

                 Bucky? Who? She looked around her room, helplessly fishing through photos for a face that matched the name. In remembering people, she was best with faces so her family had taken to leaving photographs in her room. All over it, actually. Pinned to the walls, in a million mismatched frames; black and white, faded color, bright digital colors. Some had name tags. She finally seized one of the frames bedside; in it, her beautiful younger self stood prim among a group of dirty boys she barely recognized. In fact, she didn’t most of them, but one . . . Bucky. Square face, intense eyes, charming smile and floppy hair. James Barnes. Bucky Barnes. Yes. She remembered. Steve’s best friend, oh heavens, she hated this bloody fucking disease, Bucky Barnes. “Gabe?”

                 “Still here sweet pea.”

                 “Bucky . . .”

                 “Did you see the footage of the fight?”

                 “No.” That was a lie. She wasn’t supposed to be watching violent TV, it got her riled up. The untruth came automatically. Gabe snorted.

                 “The metal armed man?”

                 What was he implying? “He . . . did he have children I didn’t know about?”

                 “No, Peg. That *was* Bucky.”

                 She let this percolate. It didn’t take too long; in her line of work, facts were facts, no matter how strange, and Gabe Jones was no liar (unlike her, and that contrast, her willingness to bend the truth [outright fabricate things], was what dealt the final blow to their marriage). Some dusty room in her mind that had sat in addled darkness suddenly had every light turned on, and she remembered everything she had known about Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers. “Oh, Steve . . .”

                 “He’s going to go after him. Only a matter of time.”

                 “Which one is going to?”

                 “Does it matter?”

                  “No.” She closed her eyes. This world, sometimes, and its agonies. “I am going to miss you, Gabe. God. Why couldn’t *we* have been frozen?”

                 “Don’t joke about that.” He was sharp. “Never.”

                 “I’m sorry.” At this age, maudlin was an affectation-- at least when she was herself. “It’s just . . . we weren’t supposed to die this way, Gabe. Not us.”

                 “Withered old biddies?”

                 She sniffled, hoped he couldn’t hear. “You aren’t a biddy.”

                 “You are.”

                  “Losing our minds.” There was nothing to say to that, so they didn’t. Not for a long time, in which Peggy thought she might have fallen asleep. When she snapped back to awareness, the phone was still at her shoulder, and she could still hear Gabe’s breathing over the line. “Did you ever tell him about us?”

                 Gabe chuckled. It was as if his attention had never wavered. Perhaps it hadn’t; perhaps she just lost track of herself and what felt like a half hour of silence passed in moments. “I didn’t have to, he read the histories. Looked me dead in the eye and said he couldn’t think of anyone else he’d rather you have ended up with. Then got all flustered, being his usual ‘oh golly gee, I didn’t mean her husband now is wrong, I just didn’t know him, or your wife, I'm an idiot’. That kid.” He gave her time to laugh. Gabe and she had really only lasted a year and change. They weren’t ready for commitment at the time, not like they thought they were, and her work and his were opposite sides of the same coin: inseparable, but never meant to meet face to face. His outright goodness, her sneakier means. He punched villains in the face; she tracked them down and got information from them by any means. And she lied. She had to.

                 Would she and Steve have ever really worked out, in that case? That old chestnut had never left her mind after the divorce.

                 Gabe. Beautiful, doe eyed Gabe, funny and kind. He was silent on the other end, breathing almost lethargic.

                 “Are you second guessing our date?” She teased.

                 “Aw, Peg.”

                 “No one will say anything, Gabe. And if they do, we’ll break their arms.” She was only half joking. “Listen . . . you know I’m not ashamed of you. And I’m not afraid. If bigots want to talk, let them. I love you. Let them stare.”

                 He was still quiet. For the first time, Peggy was afraid. “You aren’t going to break up with me, are you?” She tried to frame it was a joke, but there was a flutter in her voice that shouldn’t have been there. Things had been rocky. His parents weren’t pleased.

                 “What year is it?”

                 “What?”

                 “What year is it?”

                 “Is this a code? A test?”

                 “Year.”

                 “Nineteen fifty . . . something.”

                 He sighed, a beating of wings against the mouthpiece. She missed Steve, suddenly, achingly, and then felt horrible. Steve had never left her. No matter how much she tried. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. On the other end of the phone, he said nothing. “I betrayed you. I broke our date.”

                 The line went dead: Steve had hung up.

 

******

 

                 Steve Rogers just would not leave. Long after every other car had come and gone, after his friend (Sam Wilson, AKA The Falcon, counselor and veteran, family living, history of PTSD, allergic to shellfish) returned from the picket line—the shake in his hands was almost but not quite quelled and his expression pensive — after all of that he stayed by the graveside and stared. Winter Soldier watched him and noted how his shoulders were slumped, how Wilson kept his distance. The cops were clearing the crowd. There were nine officers and none of them were well trained. They had standard issue weapons. The protestors were a non-factor. There were no good positions of attack without revealing himself until Rogers finally went for his car, where upon the Winter Soldier could ambush him from the bracken along the side of the road.

                 Bucky Barnes watched him and saw a man mourning his friend.

                 It was still so hard. He *called* himself Bucky, but really, it was just his nickname for the blank slate within himself that he knew must contain something. Written in invisible ink, there were instructions for him: details of how he should respond to this war of observations. Right now the Soldier was still loud and clear because the Soldier was as mechanical and precise as the neat rows of graves around him: one thing followed another, all thoughts in their place. But Bucky Barnes he only knew through . . . impressions. He stood atop a great glass sheet and below it was an ocean, deep and black and filled with moving shapes that terrified him to look at directly. Winter Soldier knew what to do here, in any scenario. Bucky Barnes interfered.

                 Here is what he had managed to scrawl on the empty walls of Bucky: my name is James Barnes. I was in the Army in World War Two. I killed people like my keepers—like my former keepers. I had friends.

                 Gabe Jones was one of them. That’s why he stopped outside the newspaper stand. He knew that name, and echoing it in his head, it called to one of those deep ocean monsters. Winter Soldier tried to throw the paper away and continue on his mission. Bucky Barnes read the name over and over to himself and wondered what would happen.

                 He knew who would be here. He came. He came to survey the people who may or may not have been hunting him. He came to watch, from a distance, humans who bore names he was supposed to know, and to see what he felt.

                 Here is what he felt.

                 Concerning Steve Rogers, he was a mess. He was a Gordian knot. There was no hope of untangling that, not now. That would wait. For the time being, he let it all soak in, gathering information, emotional and otherwise.

                 Concerning Sam Wilson: he felt a tinge of something he didn’t understand until he compared it to the mental chart of facial expressions and body tics that indicated what his targets were feeling, even if they covered it up. This thing was actually two things: admiration and jealousy.

                 Concerning Nick Fury, unrecognizable to the common eye due to his Stark-made holographic disguise: nothing. He felt nothing.

                 Concerning Margaret “Peggy” Carter: Regret. This was instantly recognizable but overwhelming. He had no idea what to do with it and let the Soldier stand in for a while. Margaret Carter, he knew, was dying. She had Alzheimer’s, which was progressing rapidly. Her kidneys were also failing, a fact not widely disclosed; with a transplant, that problem would be resolved, but at age 95, she was not considered a good candidate for surgery. This would kill her in less than month unless some miracle of science intervened.

                 Concerning Gabe Jones: Loyalty. This both the Soldier and Barnes knew. It was a comforting state. In the haze of familiarity, he watched the funeral progress, until there was only Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and the corpse of Gabe Jones.  

                  Loyalty. Beyond all else, that was it, the tiny hole in the dam, into which he could place the chisel and let loose the flood. He could connect that loyalty to the Howling Commandos, whose exploits he had poured over, and through it, *feel something*, something genuine that the Soldier did not try to smother because it was within his parameters. Though he did not remember their time together, Gabe Jones was a man that Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes could serve because he was a comrade, a compatriot, and no matter how much they broke him into pieces and assembled him again, no matter how many personalities they had grafted upon him and people who he had killed in lonely little rooms, Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes had always, ALWAYS wished for comrades.

                  He fingered the object in his jeans pocket.

                  Gabe Jones was a fighter, like him. Gabe Jones was connected the way he felt he should be to Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers, even Sam Wilson, who must have grown up under the wing of Jones’s actions.

                  At long last, Rogers embraced Wilson, in a brotherly hug that was affectionate but left the other their private thoughts, and the two walked away towards Rogers' car. Now would be the time. The Soldier could move silently behind the larger of these headstones (no mausoleums, this was a new cemetery, opened only in 2009 and filled with more modest memorials) until he reached the copse of trees in the northwest corner of the cemetery and then . . .

                  He walked across artificially maintained grass and plastic flowers, stepping over markers that were flush to the earth. It wasn’t far. He had counted on the angle of the sun and press of the mourners to keep him hidden, so he had stayed close, close enough to reach this spot in just a minute, 53 seconds, to be precise. Diggers were bringing in the backhoe. He only had moments. Bucky Barnes stared into the open grave and wondered about the body inside. If loyalty extended even into death, where did that leave him? Where did it leave the soldier? And what would happen when all of them, all the Commandos, had died? It would not be long at all.

                  He had a time limit.

                  He had a memory. One fresh to him, made since his escape.

                  Their houses were not hard to find. Gabe Jones was the first because he was the only one with a permanent home in America, since Duggan traveled even in his old age, and the Soldier did not yet have a passport, and Bucky did not feel like leaving the country. His house was craftsman style, renovated but “tasteful”, i.e. within the budget of an upper middle class household but without the stylistic touches that marked the family as aspirational. It had many bedrooms for extended family and a large porch that was close to the sidewalk. There was not much front yard but an expansive backyard, with a swing set. There were several old trees. It was under one of these the Soldier stopped, waiting.

                  There were crickets and frogs.

                  Jones was on his porch. He popped can after can of soda and hummed to himself. Mostly he just rocked. Soldier was restless, Bucky unsure. He just wanted to see, and all there was to see was an old man sitting on his porch and a house full of sleeping family. There was nothing here for him. He turned to leave, and Jones whistled. It wasn’t sharp, not how you’d call a dog, just an acknowledgement: hello.

                  Barnes found himself on the front walkway. Jones leaned on his railing a squinted into the darkness; the Soldier knew he presented as a black figured silhouetted against the mercury-lit pavement, just an indistinct mass of shadow. Jones looked him up and down, and smiled. “You want a coke?” Bucky didn’t know what to say. He was rooted to the spot. He felt like the stars were needles and the sky a black bath. He was paralyzed and wanted the Soldier to take over, but Jones shrugged. “Suit yourself. You just going to stand there being all broody mysterious, I guess. That’s fine.” Click, pop, fizz, swallow. “I hope you aren’t going to the trouble of killing me. I promise it’s a useless gesture. In the hopes, though, that Steve was right—and I think he is—I wanted to tell you something, Barnes. Something I never got to say.”

                  The Soldier wanted to go. Now. Bucky grunted, a word that got caught on his tongue and curdled.  Jones took that as a positive signal, and raised his can to the heavens.

                  “James Barnes, Bucky, as long as I live, I will never stop fighting by your side. You were the best big brother a guy could have, and I have always missed you. I believe in you, man.” He took a long pull of the coke. “And it takes a lot to get me that corny in my old age.”

                  The Winter Soldier fled, and Bucky was in no condition to stop him, but the Soldier could not flee those few things Bucky wanted to keep. That night stayed. It would always stay.

                  He pulled out the object in his pocket. It was a thumb drive, silky smooth metal, shaped like a key with a plastic cap at the end. He didn’t need a label for it; nor a guide. All that was on it was a single file folder, titled thus: Codename Viper.

                  Winter Soldier had memories where Bucky Barnes did not, and Winter Soldier remembered a face from many, many years ago. This face returned every time he was awoken, but this face always looked the same. Then, he did not think of it: he did not age, why should anyone else? But of course, they did; he watched many keepers grow old and some die. This face did not.

                  This face was in charge of a very broad set of perimeters in regards to the soldier, but it boiled down to this: memories. Control, erasure, revitalization of neural pathways, keeping him young in mind while others kept him young in body.

                  Restoration.

                  This face was not among the faces of the exposed Hydra agents. This face was still out there.

                  Bucky Barnes thought of loyalty. He thought of memories. He thought of Steve Rogers, weighed down by the memory of those he once loved. He thought of Sam Wilson, who carried the memories of the soldiers he failed. He thought of Peggy Carter, assaulted by a disease of memory, of the brain. He thought of Bucky Barnes. He thought of Gabe Jones, who was pushed out of his own body by a tumor in his brain that grew out of once healthy tissue and who Bucky was too late to save.

                  Bucky thought of loyalty, and he put the thumb drive back in his pocket.  

                  He was loyal to no one. He was loyal to his handlers. He was loyal to Gabe Jones.

                  He was loyal to those he loved.

                  And he was going to save them all.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story-cum-ramble where nothing happens and people stand around talking to each other was written for my fine giftee in the 2014 Not Ready Prime Time challenge. I very, very much hope you like it. I am a little worried-- I know, in your dislikes, you said you hated character death; I hope Gabe's funeral works for you and doesn't violate this.  
> 


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